


there are many ways to say i love you

by fairmanor



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: David Rose Loves Patrick Brewer, Episode: s04e12 Singles Week, Ficlet, Fluff, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Patrick Brewer loves David Rose, Pillow Talk, Post-Episode: s04e12 Singles Week, happy valentine's day y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29429640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairmanor/pseuds/fairmanor
Summary: “I just feel like – like I need to check something. Did you only tell me you loved me because that was what we were already talking about?”A Valentine's Day ficlet about love and love and love.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 54
Kudos: 258





	there are many ways to say i love you

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! However you choose to spend the day - with friends, family, loved ones, not at all - I hope you have a nice day. I'm not too well today, but luckily being stuck in one place means I had time to bang out this fic. I hope you like it! 💖

It’s late into the night David asks the question.

Though they’re both awake, they’ve long since stopped talking. Their communication has reduced into soft, quiet sighs and traced patterns on chests and arms. Well, _reduced_ is perhaps the wrong word, what with how every point of contact is setting David alight, brought into focus and charged with an unfamiliar electricity now that every action is bordered with the thrumming continuity of _I love you_. Vocalised love. Because wow, that’s a thing that happened today.

David has his head in the crook of Patrick’s collarbone and is ghosting a gentle fingertip through the light, soft hairs on Patrick’s freckled chest. And they’re settled now, so David feels comfortable addressing what’s been sitting at the back of his mind all day without risk of spoiling the moment.

So now, when all that’s ahead of them are the grooves and turns and caverns of forever, he asks the question. Because if there’s one thing David has gained in this new life of his, it’s self-respect. And he feels like he deserves to know.

“I can hear you thinking,” Patrick murmurs, and David wants to bed himself down in the gentle vibration of his boyfriend’s chest, then feels giddy when he realises he can. He _will._ One day, the hairs on this chest will be grey and David will still be here, worrying himself to bits over little problems like town council drama or making enough food for all the family at Christmas and that vibration will be the same, ever the same, even if the voice gets older.

David hums in affirmation. “Mm. I am thinking.”

“Care to tell me about what?” Patrick says, teasing. He’s probably expecting another I love you. And David is more than happy to oblige, once he gets this out of the way.

“I just feel like – like I need to check something.”

Patrick is quiet. Ready to listen. David clears his throat.

“Did you only tell me you loved me because that’s what we were already talking about?”

There’s a beat of silence, a hitch of breath. Then, “Baby –”

“No, no, I’m not doubting anything,” David says, because apparently love means knowing exactly what’s coming next. “I just – I’m checking, because…I don’t want to be a bore again by talking about everything that came _before,_ but historically I’ve only ever heard it in a way that kind of made me feel like – I don’t know, an impulse buy.”

Patrick’s hand gets tighter around David’s arm. He’s still silent. Listening.

“Like one time, I’d been going out with this guy for – oh, about a week. Less than, even. And we were coming out of this club in SoHo at like five in the morning and he turned around and said it. I can’t – I can’t really remember what I felt, but it was kind of hopeful, I guess? I thought ‘okay, this is a good start. This time things might be different.’ Then he sobered up. He said it was just something he tried out because he wanted to write about the moment later in a five-minute screenplay about affairs.”

Patrick’s other arm comes to meet the one already around David, practically pulling him on top. David can feel his heart’s steady thump. It’s warm here, and despite the emotional purge he feels safe.

They stay like that for a while, before Patrick mutters, “Damn film majors.”

That gets a laugh out of David. He laughs for a while, and Patrick joins in, the reverberation passing between them like a shared drumbeat. David’s relieved. He knows he does need to talk about his past seriously sometimes, but other times – like this one – he’s grateful just to have someone there to share the problem and help get it out into the open. To sew it into this tapestry they’re building together; to know that one day something else, something bigger and better, will be embroidered over the top, raised like a soft, painless scar and bursting with colours.

“You didn’t answer my question,” David says after a while, his entire body now straddling Patrick. Patrick’s eyes soften.

“I was thinking about the answer,” Patrick says, his lips pursed. “Not quite sure how to word it.”

Now David’s the one who’s silent. Listening.

“Because on the one hand, it technically _was_ the fact that we were talking about Alexis that brought it into my head – no, wait,” he says, when he feels David’s stomach muscles clench. “But only because I’ve been waiting to say it since the moment I met you.”

Oh.

“Almost everything I’ve ever said to you feels like some variation of it,” Patrick says, the words catching in his throat as the weight of them hits him gently. “I’ve been trying to tell you for – God, even back before we were dating, when I felt like I didn’t have the right to do anything other than help you with the store. Even then, I was trying to get it across _somehow.”_

Moments flash across David’s mind’s eye in minute fractions. Coffee orders memorised, guitars strummed, tiny useful gifts sent to David’s door because Patrick always seems to know what he needs. Little matchsticks lit and stacked and glued together to build a home. All this time, _all this time,_ Patrick has been putting in so much effort. So much effort to build this for them.

“And then you talking about Alexis this morning just kind of…jogged my memory. Reminded me.”

David swallows. When he speaks, his voice comes out just as tight and tear-filled as it feels. “Reminded you what?”

“That all the things I want with you, that everything we could have…I’ve got it. If I want it.”

_Oh._

David has to bury his face into Patrick’s neck, then, because there’s really nowhere else he’d rather be. And what’s more, he hadn’t even told Patrick anything about how it went with Ted. He didn’t say a word about it, but somehow Patrick’s here, just _saying things like that,_ and David wonders if other people feel love like this too. If it feels like it never ends. That – that _God,_ realising you’re in love really is just the first layer, and from there it just never ends.

“I love you,” David says, muffled and safe in Patrick’s warmth, and it surprises them both. David had half-wondered earlier in the day when he would have the courage to say it first, and here he was. Because Patrick makes him feel brave. “I love you.”

_I love you, and it just keeps going. It's never going to stop._

He beds himself down right where they both want him. Even here, in a room that used to make him cringe, in a town where he used to feel lost, he’s never felt better. In his entire life. Never more comfortable, never more found. He's so cozy that he squirms and holds tighter and rubs his legs together like a cricket, making Patrick laugh lightly.

David can’t remember if they talk any more after that, or if they just sleep. It doesn’t matter either way. Every touch is a conversation, every look a promise of forever.

He’s never held anyone this tightly in his life. Never been held like this. 

And now that they’ve got it, and they want it, neither of them are ever going to let go.


End file.
